That Obnoxious Little White Boy Who Lives With Me. . .

Some thoughts about one of my cats, bringing a new kitten into a household with adult cats, and absurdly funny nick names.

Submitted:Mar 23, 2010
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"White" people don't have white skin, not even glow-in-the-dark
Caucasians like me. And his skin isn't white, either. It's pink.
It's his fur that's white. Pure white. His momma was a long
haired seal-point Siamese, and his daddy was a Godknows. The
other four in the litter were completely coal black. I chose him
because I could always tell which one he was. You see, I already
had two cats -- 2 years old, a brother and sister from the same
litter, and they were both on the large end of the cat size
spectrum, and the first part of my plan to integrate this new
kitten into the menage involved rubbing him down good with a tea
towel, then leaving the towel lying about for the other two to
sniff, with the idea that when I brought the kitten home, he
would not be a complete stranger to them. I also borrowed a cage
from a colleage who raised Persians. The kitten would come home
in the cage and stay in the cage until everyone had hissed and
made up. I also thought that because he was obviously the
dominant kitten in the litter, he might be better able to hold
his own in a household with two cats who were years older, much
bigger and 4 times heavier than he was. Of course, it would also
help that he had claws, and they didn't. I decided to name him
Gobi (like the Mongolian desert) Gobotiputtitatti. I needn't have
worried about him. He had, it seemed, a double helping of his
Siamese mother's "catitude" and having been the dominant one in a
litter of 5, he was used to throwing his weight around (all 2 lbs
of it). For the first month or so, he was only out of the cage
for a couple of hours at a time, and only when I was there to act
as referee. However, I was working at home by then, and when I
went into the "office" (read: "back bedroom") to work, I would
take the cage with me and set it on the floor beside me while I
worked. He was so cute and pink, and he was such a holy terror!
He'd wade right into the middle of the other two, who naturally
did not appreciate having their tickets punched by his
needle-like teeth or being warted half to death by the
depredatory efforts of this bantam-weight tiger wannabe, and when
they would back off from his incessant onslaughts and take to the
heights, that would just reinforce his belief that his stuff was
about the hottest thing around. In fact, he was getting so
aggressive that I had him declawed at 2 months, and neutered at 4
months, in hopes that it would chill him out a little. Guess
again.

By the time he was a year old, it was apparent that he had also
inherited his mother's luxuriously long fur -- but all of his is
snow white. The guard hairs are over two inches long, and the
undercoat could be spun into yarn and passed off as cashmere. He
has inch-long tufts of fur in between the pads of his paws, his
tail looks like a feather boa, and his whiskers are nothing short
of splendid -- I've measured some of them at over 6 inches long.
He has that broad, flat tiger head, with the tiger "muttonchops,"
high cheekbones and amber yellow eyes.

His version of the "crepuscular crazies" is particularly
frenetic. In fact, it reminds me of that Japanese Kabuki play
that has the lion character, played by an actor in a long white
Tina Turner wig that hangs halfway down his back, and he does
this song and dance number where he leaps about the stage and
shakes his mane, and the music is all clangy, gongy, twangy and
percussive. Gobi goes pelting through the house like an F-14
(Tomcat!) on afterburner, his tail streaming out like a contrail
behind him. Then he comes to a screeching halt (not unlike a
carrier landing), whirls about, strikes all these dramatic, tail
flourishing poses, and favors the household with renditions of
some of the juicier Kabuki soliloquies in high Aragoto
style.

I guess I get it from my dad, this tendency to invent
ridiculously elaborate noms de spoof for the purpose of gently
teasing people (read: me and my sib). I mean Gobi already had a
pretty ornate monicker to start with: Gobi Gobotiputtitatti (His
mom was a New Delhi Danglibelli). However, pretty early in the
game, he acquired "Cadwallader P. Tailflourisher," for obvious
reasons. And for reasons which are obscure even to me, he went
through a period when he was Glockenspiel and starred in his own
epic poem (with sheepish apologies to Sir Walter Scott) that
went, "Oh, Glockenspiel has come out of the West. Of all of the
kitties, his tail is the best. If making a shambles is your kind
of deal, then you need a cat like young Glockenspiel."and so
forth, ad absurdum. Then there was the Weird Al Yankovichian "Mr.
Poopdangles," with lyrics that alluded to one of the more
embarassing complications of having long fur in certain areas.
Then there is his thing about boxes. If it's a closed box, then
he'll lie on top of it, and if it's an open box, he'll curl up in
it. The box my new printer came in immediately became the
preferred presiding place and consequently sat in the middle of
the living room floor for five months until I finally sawed down
the legs of a sofa table and made a coffee table out of it. Only
then could I finally get rid of the printer box, because until I
provided a suitable replacement, every time I tried to throw the
box out, he would kvetch and whine and kvetch and whine and
kvetch and whine. . . . . Thus, as he presided over the living
room from his printer box throne, he became Emperor Pu An Yu, and
later, simply Pu. He is Tiger!Tiger! burning bright in the
forests of the furniture, (which doesn't scan but never mind), in
which guise he is death to cat toys, which he ultimately
dispatches after a heroically athletic bit of
Douglas-Fairbanksian swash-and-bucklery. Of course, once you've
killed the beast, then you must parade about the house carrying
it in your mouth, and sing "The Mighty Hunter Song" (as featured
on his latest album, "Songs from Big Pink").

Although he's going on 6 now, he's still very like those big for
their age, 4-year-old boys who are unruly, rowdy and
obstreperous. The ones who grow bigger but never grow up. They
charge through life like a bull at a gate with all the subtlty
and refinement of the barbarians in the Capital One credit card
commercial. Contrary though he may be, and he can be quite
contrary if he chooses, he is my self-appointed wing man, my
second banana. He insists on sleeping on the bed by my side, and
of the three, he is the one most likely to follow me from room to
room as I go about my day. He's the one who preempted the
cardboard box my transcriber foot pedal came in, tossed on the
floor beside my desk 2 years ago when I unpacked it. Somehow, 13
pounds of cat magically manages to coil himself into this 12 x 9
inch box and snoozes there for hours while I work. It has
acquired a rime of white cat fur around the bottom over the
years. Oh, and did I mention he eats paper? Newsprint, envelopes,
copier paper, bills, greeting cards, magazines, cash register
tape, toilet paper, whatever. One time he got up on my desk and
ate a rather large chunk out of my electric utilities bill. I
actually had to call customer service, explain that my cat had
chewed off the part of my bill where it said how much I owed, and
I didn't know how much to make the check for. The customer
service rep got a good laugh, and I got a lesson about keeping
important papers in drawers where he can't get at them. He has a
particular sweet tooth for tissues. When I set a box of tissues
out, I can't pull a tissue up out of the opening ready to grab.
I have to make sure it's pushed down inside the box because if I
don't , it will be munched. Yep, he's an ol' Pu, but he's a good
ol' Pu.